Poetry from the Low Countries: River foreland by Willem van Toorn

Saturday 27 December 2014

River foreland by Willem van Toorn

River foreland

Beneath the dyke cow parsley, hogweed, poppies, thistles, the summer rage of stinging-nettles. The landscape of stories. How bottomless the kolk where you should never swim. An other word for a kolk is an eddy. How immense the mythical pike who lives there and your grandfather, as a boy, already saw before. On that side of the dyke the old man lives alone in a crooked house. During high water he puts the chairs on the kitchen table and takes up residence with his children on this side, until the water has dropped.

Willem van Toorn [1935]

Original title: Uiterwaard - From the collection: Dooltuin - 1995 - Em. Querido's Uitgeverij B.V. - Amsterdam

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Hans van den Bos

was born in Rotterdam, The Netherlands in 1948.

In the late Sixties, after National Service, he began working in a bookshop, which he took over after a number of years. The shop, under his direction, became specialised in Literature, Modern Art and Architecture, containing one of the largest collections of poetry in the whole of The Netherlands.

He was invited, in the 1990's, by the former director of Poetry International, the late Martin Mooij, to display his poetry collection on a book stall at the annual festival in Rotterdam. In 1997 he closed the shop and 5 years later emigrated to Ireland, where he is presently busy as a writer and translator of poetry.

Contact: JohannesvandenBos@protonmail.com

Hilary Reynolds

Hilary Reynolds is an English/Dutch classical singer, music teacher and choral conductor, who was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela in 1954.

She studied singing and piano at the Royal Academy of Music in London and, after graduating in 1978, moved to The Netherlands, where she pursued a career as a concert singer and vocal coach. In 2002, she moved to Ireland, together with her husband, Hans van den Bos, where she had been invited by the Head of the Music Department of University College Cork to take up a post there teaching Vocal Studies, Art-Song and Opera.

For a number of years, she has collaborated with Hans van den Bos writing theatre shows and plays and assisted with translations of his own work as well as of other poets, including translations of Russian poetry by Anna Achmatova.